Ley Lines

by Lisa Lowell

  “Catch her?” the magistrate scoffed. “How? We didn't know she could do this much. Usually she just heals goats and the croup. Gailin's never done something this… this… destructive.”

  “Except she let Kail die,” the lady wrapping the bodies commented. “Now we've lost the only healer in the village.”

  The magistrate didn't want to hear another obvious flaw in his plan and so he pulled Drake farther away from the gallows and advised him on how to find Gailin's house, where she had been tending her grandmother until a few days before. After promising that he would inform the magistrate if Gailin returned to her home, Drake departed to find the cottage on the edge of the forest where he hoped he could lure the girl, if she did not come voluntarily. At least it had the advantage of being isolated, away from the village proper. From there he could simply call her and she would be his, heart and soul.

  * * *

  Jonis paced back and forth in front of the small cabin that bordered the forest edge. He couldn't stand being indoors right now, even if the house almost blended into the forest around it. Instead he appeased his guilt by keeping the door open to the late spring wind. He would hear if Gailin's grandmother stirred. It was the least he could do for the young lady he'd fallen in love with.

  Grieving silently, Jonis trod back and forth from the kitchen garden on the southern side to the well-worn path weaving into the thinning forest. He had heard about the hanging and knew exactly what Gailin would have asked of him if he had been there when she was arrested: please watch over Grandmother and don't come to see the hanging. He had known Gailin all his life and while he could never actually say the words aloud, he loved her. Now his love was too late.

  Grandmother, the only family Gailin ever had, rarely woke and Jonis had avoided answering the old woman's quavering questions whenever she did wake by feeding her the broth that the girl had left in the pot, but he could not bear speaking the words of truth to the grandmother. Gailin's hanging would kill Grandmother and Jonis couldn't face more death at this point. Nothing was going to be the same with Gailin gone.

  Jonis looked up into the sky, glaring at the high noon sun. It would be done by now. Hung for helping. He could not believe the village would do such a thing. Primitive as they were how could anyone say an evil bone existed in Gailin's makeup? Miserably Jonis finally got together the nerve to go back into the hut, out from under the betraying noon sun to wait for Grandmother to waken and to share with her finally, the fate of her granddaughter.

  * * *

  Drake approached the rustic cabin cautiously. He didn't want to frighten the girl if she had already come back home. He pushed his magical awareness ahead of him and sensed two people in the cabin, one in bed, one upright but he could not guess at more. Therefore he would come as an expected visitor and walked up to the door to knock. People in this land were suspicious of many things but manners went a long way to reassuring them.

  “Hello? Is anyone home?” he called and then stuck his head inside.

  Only a small fire on the hearth lit the low, single room cottage and beyond the table Drake saw a young man who paced back and forth. From his distracted look he probably was a farmer in the local area, neglecting his fields at planting season out of devotion to his sweetheart by watching over her grandmother. The dirt and sweat on his clothes made it seem like he had come directly from the fields and his distress etched itself on his face. But as Drake walked in, it seemed the young man might crumble.

  “Did they… did they…?” the young man began, his voice cracking.

  Drake came into the hut and held out a hand. “Relax, young man. Gailin escaped. She sent me here to tell you, for she will not be able to come back. She wanted me to check on her grandmother. Now, what's your name, boy?”

  “J…Jonis.”

  “Well Jonis, I'm here to help. Has Gailin returned yet?”

  Jonis gave him one confused look and Drake easily read in his simple mind; Gailin didn't even know how her beau had gallantly come to defend her home, anything to soften the blow for her.

  And Gailin would never know, even now. Drake would not leave Jonis to interfere with what he now planned. The magician's green, careful eyes flicked a look at the old woman asleep in the bed beyond and then took a step toward the young farmer.

  “Well, if she hasn't returned, then it's not too late.” Drake felt his mouth move into a false smile. His clever eyes caught the simple dirt brown stare of the confused peasant and reached out his hand toward him to say, without a bit of inflection, “Jonis, die.”

  The farmer's head rolled back faster than his eyes, his knees buckling and he went down, obedient to the sorcerer's order. A sack of his own grain held more life than the bag of burly bones the young man represented while Drake soaked in yet another life force, strong and vibrant. The sorcerer trembled with pleasure and luxuriated in the warmth it brought to his gut. Then, without any ceremony, he made the earthen floor of the cabin swallow the farmer whole. Let him fertilize here rather than out in his fields somewhere.

  Drake then turned to the old woman who slept on in oblivion. Taking her life, flickering and fading, would benefit nothing and might make Gailin suspicious. While he had every intention of using the girl, he wanted her willingly, not frightened or coerced magically. Wouldn't that be a feat: to command a magician without force?

  So Drake would wait just as Jonis had, for Gailin to come home. The wizard might even walk the same path back and forth, pressing the disturbed earthen floor, just in case it appeared like someone was buried there. Drake could wait patiently.

  * * *

  At dusk Vamilion stopped his stealthy path through the forest, pausing at a creek that ran through the trees to rest and take his bearings. He needed to listen to the magic that moved around him. He could sense the dark sorcerer had given up the search for him, having remained behind in the village. The girl, the new Wise One, she had survived her hanging and Vamilion's awkward attempt to rescue her. Vamilion magically sensed how she had followed him into the forest, though she had fallen several miles behind, and had also stopped for the evening. He could practically taste her fear and confusion. Well, that meant he could continue to help her after a fashion. He only hoped this worked.

  Vamilion drew on the magic he possessed to conjure a fire, a bucket in which to put water and a quick meal all while he found a mossy stone under the trees to serve as a seat. Then with a bit more concentration he conjured a tablet with a blackwood stylus to match it. He had never actually done this, but until he trained Gailin, hopefully from a distance, he had a responsibility to help her. He would not leave her in this new magical world to stumble into her powers as his mentor had done to him.

  Tapping into his imagination, Vamilion crafted a link between the tablet he held and the book that Gailin hopefully still carried with her. Creating that link after the fact was difficult magic. Could the girl even read? That wasn't a guarantee in this newly colonized land, full of pioneers and little opportunity to study a more civilized art like reading. If she couldn't read or write, this effort to teach from a distance just got more difficult. Slowly, with the flickering firelight as his guide, Vamilion began writing on his tablet with the stylus and imagined the book in the girl's possession reflected his message. He then sculpted a yearning for her to look into the book and discover its secrets.

  Hopefully her curiosity would guide her. Gailin had stopped in the forest and found a place to rest, curling up around her pit of fear, though she would never be able to sleep after the scare she had experienced. Vamilion imagined her staring wide-eyed up through the branches of the forest at the full moon overhead and would feel the tickling desire to explore the prize she had taken with her. She would sit up in the twilight and open the book, brushing her hands across the blank pages and then see how his words seeped onto the first page, line by careful line. She would want to know about the magic that had rescued, and then abruptly abandoned her. It would be in her nature as a Wise One to want to know mo
re.

  That same curiosity ran through his own veins and had driven Vamilion to come to this newly opened land twenty-five years before. And that curiosity had brought Owailion to him and made him a magician before he even knew what that meant. The first Wise One, Owailion, had given him no choice but to touch the Heart Stone, no more than Vamilion had just given to Gailin in her turn. It was cruel to have no choice, but this new nation, the Land and its unbridled magic demanded it. Where there flowed power, there must be some way to harness it or the wild magic would escape and forever scar the Land.

  Vamilion wrote carefully, “If you can read this, please write back to me.”

  Then he waited, not daring to tap into Gailin's thoughts, to see if she had given in to the prompting and opened the book or even noticed his message. She had camped only a few miles away, well within his ability to hear her mind, but that did not tempt him. He would not do that if he could help it. Listening to her thoughts would only bring the compulsion to love her all the stronger. He must avoid that urge with all his might. He wanted to be faithful to Paget, no matter what magic might demand of him. Vamilion would fight to remain Paget's husband.

  He waited, imagining the girl finding a burnt stick or a rock in the ground that she could gouge out a corresponding message back to him. It might take half the evening, but he could be patient. But what if she couldn't read? Could he teach her from afar? Probably not, but he could hope before he considered what he would do if she lacked that skill. Patience was another talent a Wise One must command and Vamilion possessed more than even he knew. He could wait for the foundations of stone to erode away if need be and not stir if magic demanded the patience of a mountain.

  * * *

  Gailin couldn't run anymore and her fear and confusion only added to the exhaustion. The dark of the forest, even though the sun had not yet set, contributed as well. Hunger and chill also made their demands known and she had to sit. Without meaning to, she slumped down against a tree trunk and finally stopped her escape. Had she been obedient enough to the order to run for her life? She would lose her life if she continued much farther.

  Without the frantic roar of her heart and her own breathing in her ears, she could hear water nearby and turned an ear toward the sound. She crawled the few feet to the brook and drank her fill, heedless of the impurities she knew lurked there. When she finally had the energy to move again, though her arms trembled at the effort to leverage herself away from the water, she looked around and began to assess her situation.

  Frankly, her world was gone. She dare not return to her home; the villagers would stake that out immediately, knowing she would worry about her grandmother. Would Jonis come watch over her grandmother? He would have done that last service for her, even if she had spurned his advances. She couldn't remember seeing his kind face in the crowd at the hanging and she doubted he would have the stomach for such a horrible spectacle. Now, looking back with regret, she knew it had been wise to cut his love out of her life. Being a farmer's wife had never figured into her future and she had known it even before the boy had come to her cabin with a bouquet of wildflowers and all the sweet words he could mumble.

  But Gailin would not survive long in the woods alone and without a single tool to her name. She looked around herself and noticed the frayed end of the noose still around her neck. Almost frantically she clawed off the obscene necklace and then examined the break in the rope with a clinical eye. Every strand had burst on its own, not in a clean cut but in a tremendous, raggedy rip. What force had done this? Well, she couldn't answer that so she began dismantling the rope, strand for strand as she considered possibilities.

  Magic, of course had been behind her miraculous escape, but what kind of magic? Her grandmother had told her of the magic in Malornia where she had come from originally and how dragons and demons lurked throughout that country, making the wilds dangerous beyond belief. The non-magical humans there needed to congregate in great cities to avoid destruction. The magical people had protected them, but had also ruled with an iron fist, controlling those without the gifts, almost like slaves. No one dared venture far from the walled cities and so starvation and disease often stalked the crowded streets.

  That was why Grandma had immigrated to this country. The Land had been sealed for time in memorial and no humans had settled until the time of the Breaking, when suddenly, for no known reason, the Land had opened. People like Gailin's grandparents had come to settle in this newly opened but utterly wild territory. They might not have the protection of walls and magic, but at least they were free to make their own way. Unfortunately, the diseases of the old lands had followed the immigrants, and taken Gailin's parents before she ever knew them. Raised by her grandmother on the tales from the old lands, the golden-headed girl had sworn to learn how to battle disease without magic. That was why they had settled here, near a river, along a forest with the prairie on the edge and the mountains only a few days walk away. She gathered all the herbs and mushrooms needed to cure the worst diseases. She also grew the rich garden that provided all the nutrients to remain healthy that could be found here.

  That the villagers distrusted her healthy ways could not be helped. The settlers had brought with them the suspicions from their old lands too. While no one here seemed born with magic, the stories and fears of such power existed and poisoned many who came. If Gailin and her grandmother so much as weathered the yearly flu without misery, the cry of magic went through the village. So now Gailin sat in the dark dismantling the rope that evidenced that distrust. She looked down at the strands of hemp now filling her filthy apron and considered them bitterly. Could she weave this mess into a more serviceable rope? She needed something with which to catch food and it might prove to be a decent snare at least.

  She had only begun to weave her snare when the compulsion to look at the book struck like a spear.

  She couldn't see the tome clearly in the dark, but her need to open the thick cover drove her to it. Her grandmother had taught her the value of books and had laboriously taught her the letters, but the only book she had ever seen was her grandmother's herb and plant book. She had marveled at the delicately drawn and colored pictures, paying little attention to the words written carefully below each image. Now she eagerly lifted the hefty new book and then looked around the trees for her best light. She ended up sitting under a dead tree that boasted no leaves and so allowed the light of the full moon to filter down. Then she lifted the cover.

  The creamy pages glowed brilliantly under the moonlight, without a mark on them. No pictures or words marred their surface. She was about to turn to the next empty page when, much to her surprise, a firmly written word began to appear. One simple sentence emerged across the first page, as if her perusal had instigated the magic to make it appear. It emerged slowly, in strong, simple enough script for her to work out the words in her rudimentary skill.

  “If you can read this, write back to me.”

  If I can read this? How could she hope to write back? Who was doing this? The hangman who had rescued her, surely? Magic again threw its weight back at her, tossing her into that world and she couldn't find her bearings. This magic, so unlike the tales of blasts and bloodletting, explosions and evil her grandmother had told her, haunted Gailin now. Dare she answer back? She knew deep down that this magic demanded she answer it but she had nothing with which to reply. She looked around at the forest floor and wondered. The dead tree against which she rested might have bark that rotted and would leave a mark on the white page. With her fingers she gouged a longish strip out of the softened bark and experimentally drew it along her palm. The material crumbled into a thick bumbling mark, but if she sharpened it a bit against the ground, working off the weaker bits, it might make a readable letter.

  “I can read a little. Who are you?” she wrote carefully, filling the opposite page with her thick, choppy bark scratches.

  Her mystery correspondent replied back almost immediately, but elected to move his much thinn
er, finely written words to the next page so as to not interfere with her childish script. “I'm the one who told you to wish the rope to break. You may call me Vamilion. It's not my real name, but it is not safe to use names. I know yours so do not write it here. In fact, do not use your name again. It will never be safe for you to use your name.”

  Gailin scrawled the obvious, “Why?”

  “You will have many questions,” he wrote below her crumbling script. “First, let's get you a better writing stick. Much like you wished the rope to break, you can wish for a stylus. Think about the ground beneath you. Imagine there is a writing stick in your hand and concentrate. Then wish the matter of the earth would turn into that writing device and put it in your hand.”

  Gailin wasn't at all satisfied with this surreal message, but she also felt the lure of a challenge. Was she becoming a magician, or was this mystery man doing the magic and all she was doing was the wishing? She felt willing to experiment at least. She held out her hand above the book and closed her eyes, concentrating on the humus on the forest floor. Some bit of it would gather into graphite and charcoal, coalescing into a stick easily sharpened to a fine tip. It took her a moment to focus on this wish and then she felt the shaft appear in her hand and her eyes flashed open with amazement.

  Breathlessly she wrote, demonstrating her success with her much improved handwriting. “Can this wishing provide me with a supper? I've not eaten in over a day.”

  “Yes,” Vamilion wrote back. “Very good. A stylus is easy, but conjuring anything you need is relatively simple magic. Be careful though. You might attract attention if you conjure too many grand things that aren't strictly necessary. Usually you make do with what everyone else around you must use.”

  “Supper?” Gailin wrote back and then set the stylus in between the pages and practiced this new skill by bringing into being a plate of vegetables steamed and a bit of rabbit already cooked in the herbs she knew tasted best. She had to concentrate more, for her hands trembled in her nervous realization that this man had turned her into a magician.